No weight loss for months

#1

So TL;DR I was going too come here and complain but it turns out I have been losing fat, just not weight lol. I am down 2 inches of my waist, 3 inches off my hips, and gained an inch on my neck. BF is at 29%(about) I am by no means HAPPY, but it’s less dire than I originally thought.

So, been struggling the last few months. I have been in ant out of ketosis because of stress, cheating, not sleeping enough, not drinking enough water, etc…etc… I have been trying hard to keep at it and keep it going but there always seems to be something in my way. I ate something I shouldn’t caving into my intense sugar cravings I never was able to kick even after 2 years on keto. No matter what, the temptation is always there and it doesn’t help that I live in a house of non keto believers.

I am a Licensed Massage Therapist by trade so I get a lot of light to moderate exercise everyday. I am able to stay away from most non keto foods on days I don’t work long enough to have a break. But when I do have the break… the break room is full of pasta, potatoes, and other amazing things I can’t eat and I just sit there smelling it… staring at it… It’s been rough. Plus I also always have the sighing and groaning from family and friends when I wont cheat for a family function or going out to eat. Luckily I am moving out of my parents house in a month and a half so I can 100% eliminate non-keto foods from my home environment.

Sleep, ugh how I love sleep… but I suffer from anxiety and PTSD. Plus my bf lives in California right now so our time zone differences can cause some issues. However in the last week or two i had to lay down the law and tell him he needed to meet me half way and give me time to talk to him BEFORE 10pm, or he would not talk to me that day.

So anyways, it’s been literally months and I have been depressingly hovering between 147-154. It just won’t go down. If I happen to touch 147 it’s because I was fasting and as soon as I start to reintroduce food again, I start to creep back up. I become depressed and distraught over it because I always end up going back up to about 149-151. Then at some point I end up cheating or eating too much salt and shooting up to 154 again… then I fast and do it all over again.

I see now that I have been making SOME progress. But It’s been over 2 years now and I am still only down about 20-25 pounds. It is disheartening that I gave up a lot of things I loved and wanted to keep off 20 pounds but never really reaching my goal. When I had those foods in my diet, I wasn’t gaining weight. I was just hovering around 170-180 at my highest but more realistically around 165 when I wasn’t pigging out and wrecking myself with alcohol and energy drinks.

I feel like this diet takes a lot of will power, time management, cooking at home, and money. but, all i feel I have gained in return is a slightly less fat ass and slightly less cottage cheese thighs. I am about the same weight I was LAST January. :frowning:

#2

It looks like this letter to yourself hits some important valid points about hurdles you’re hitting on improving your health and eating. Take note of them and work on fixing them one by one.

As for cravings, there is scientific studies that show that cravings are intensified, if you are not getting enough salt in your Keto way of eating. So make sure you are salting your food to taste good for you with a good mineral rich salt, and that may take some of the intensity out of those will power draining cravings.

KCKO.

#3

Agree with FB. You wrote out some problems for yourself and now you know what you do need to tackle.

I feel your post directly. I know these feelings big time. They are rough as hell! No doubt about it ever!

For me, the family would be eating all kinds of crap, old fav dinners I loved and I would have to leave the table and go outside and rant and scream. UNFAIR!~ Why could some people eat it all and be in a better place than me! I had the ‘so unfair’ of this ‘crap azz dieting’ stuff in my life over and over again. I went bonkers all about food til the day it finally came together for me.

I walked into carnivore. It is what suits me. I eat so well. So full. This is the plan that was my savior…….not saying in ANY way this is what you need to do at all :slight_smile: :slight_smile: Please understand that cause many will think I am pushing this here, but I am not.

What I am saying is I made a plan that works for me. I had to fight, claw, scream, go nuts on food plans and in and out of ketosis all the time going toward insanity finding ME in all this. That is key. You have to find that eating plan that suits you personally and make it all about you.

Hate to cook. Find simple, easy fast methods of meals. Find restaurants and research menus to suit your food needs.
Willpower. Willpower gets one started, satiety holds one. You have to eat well on your plan to be full and happy. Hunger drives one off plan, no doubt about that for me personally, so I had to be sure I was full at all times.
Time management…when I went super simple on meals, ate big and was full, I found my focus off food and not having to ‘deal with it’ all the time. It came off my ‘constant’ list of things to handle for the day…like make food all the time to feed me LOL

So yea you see some troubles. But you also got some nice results. Results you now want to hold and probably improve. So you did list a few things, just take them one by one like FB said and see how you do.

Just find what works for you at all times. Tweak, bob and weave, dodge and duck thru it all and find the best way for you to prepare foods, not be hungry, shop good sales at the store to save a buck eating better :slight_smile: and more.

You got this!! Best of luck to you truly. It is hard as heck til we all find our sweet spot and move forward in easier fashion.

#4

You lost fat, that’s good, I lose not even that. But keto is easy for me (when I do it but I start to have no options and it’s fine. carbs just mess up my life).
My own keto is easy for me, at least. It may be extremely important how exactly you eat on keto. It affects cravings, hunger, boredness with food… Maybe keto isn’t for you in any way, I have no idea (though it seems less carbs are better for you as you eat more on a carbier diet, just like me) but I would experiment with different styles before giving up. I felt keto very restricted and my 40g net carbs limit very low. Now I find 5g just perfect (when I have meat, that’s quite important, not surprisingly). People change and they may be surprised when changing their food choices anyway. I never was sad if I gave up delicious old favs not right for me but I did desire them sometimes and I ate sweets every day even on keto. But on very low-carb, such desires truly disappeared, way more effective than on keto. Maybe it’s not about carbs for you. I think I would be unsatisfied and less controllable even on extreme low-carb if I ate only adequate protein but if I eat more (and enough fat too), I become satiated and content. It’s mostly the macros for me but food with the same macros may be different too. Experiment a bit, maybe it will help.

#5

i lied i guess… I just ballooned up 10 pounds again. this just happens over and over.

In the last 2 years of keto I have almost almost nothing when accounting for water weight. This is so disheartening.

I do strict keto, eat and track macros most days, i get enough sleep, etc. I haave a physically demanding job and do other exercise outside of work.

But my weight alwaays stalls aand then the only way to lose anymore is to either fast, or eat less.

So i fast for aa day or 2 and lose a little bit more, i feel great, i look great… i hit 145-147 pounds… then as soon as i relax the fast the few pounds come right baack aand then i get super defeated… keep trying keep going and slowly more aand more weight creeps on… so i give up and cheat for a few days aand then my weight balloonns back up aannd then i start over from 155-160!!! ( this is in a 2 - 3 week span) aand then i work to lower it back down for months LITERAL MONTHS.

I can’t say this diets worth it to me any longer. if months of work can be undone in one weeks thenn im not losing fat, im just losing the food/water weight. maaybe a few pounds over the last 2 yearts yes but overall. the amount of effort and chaange my diet needs for such a terribly tiny loss of fat is no longer worth it to me <3 thanks guys.

(Also my keyboard is shit and double types but i didnt bother to fix it)

#6

I’m sorry it is such a bad time for you.

I did that also. I did the hamster wheel of insanity of ‘dieting and starving’ and whatever other tricks/tips to lose lbs super fast and then cheated and gained it right back and then had to lose it again…over and over.

It isn’t keto plan at all. It is how you are doing the plan.
It is simple and it sucks rocks to say it but every single cheat you do sets you back twofold and you can never win this game. If you do this type of behavior on ANY dieting plan in your life you will never hit your final goal. I know, cause I did it!!

Unless you get out of ‘diet mentality’ and needing to lose every lb. you want gone overnight and keeping it off by eating cheat foods…unless you change this way of thinking you can’t win.

You are denying, excusing and pretending thru the whole time to yourself. Only by changing your eating long term to any plan that is a good one to fit your lifestyle and you are good with the foods you are eating on that plan you can’t get long term good results.

A big key to losing fat and keeping it off is always staying on the plan you choose to lose the weight. The cheating days gotta go.

I know long term success people who hit their goal weight and then maintain long term say one thing and boy if they don’t all say it and mean it…you have to eat in maintenance at your goal weight area just like you did in your weight loss phase on plan.

So it means how ya lose your lbs is what it takes to always keep them off you…so on the relax and cheat days everything you accomplished is undone. And darn if it ain’t undone fast as heck and it stinks! I know~!

Try a new plan or whatever catches your eye but make one total commitment to that next thing you try…stay on the plan and follow its’ guidelines and don’t cheat and let the plan work for you. You have to be able to live long term on that plan without delving back into bigger cheat days and eating junk again.

I know it is hard. I walked thru tons of crazy while ‘dieting’ til that one day I said no more. I picked my plan, jumped in full force and said I was sticking to it and changing all my old baggage about dieting and all and it took me time, but I changed me and my thinking on it all…I hope with time you can walk thru all the crazy of it and find your sweet spot to find success you desire~! Best of luck!!

(Bunny) #7

Was wondering how tall you are?

That could be why?

10 pounds is not a lot of weight gain or loss, that’s water weight and muscle gain to me.

Almost sounds like that’s your normal weight or that your not over weight and your body may be trying to maintain that set point?

155-160 could be a lot if your 4 feet tall! I think most peeps wished they could maintain even that and in that case your very fortunate.

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #8

I’m sorry you’re feeling so defeated. Maybe you’re right and it’s not working for you, the way you’re working it. I know personally that 160 is the lowest my body will go (from past experience, I’m 5’8 and muscular) and it would be a constant battle getting and staying below that.

What is your new plan, eat carbs but calorie restrict? It works for some people, my mother has maintained her weight her entire life doing this. Whatever you choose, I wish you the best.

#9

I am not dieting and starving myself. I eat 1300-1500 calories a day depending on my workload. I fast for 24-48 hours maybe twice a month at most, and when i’m cheating, it’s because i’ve already lost and then i make it worse.

And It’s not a diet mentality its a lifestyle change. However that same mentality makes it way easier to cheat when I can tell myself “it’s fine, i just wont make it my new norm or a habit…since im NOT dieting”

I also unfortunately do not find your words encouraging, supportive, or even truthful because you were not there for all of this so saying I am denying or excusing and pretending is somewhat insulting.

For the entire first year I was doing keto very strictly with very few cheats. I was in school and trapped there without a way to cheat which was great. My weight just always went up and down up and down over and over through the entire time i was at school with a very slight downward overall direction.

After the first year I was trying to lose weight, before i was even actually doing keot, I went from my MAXIMUM weight of 177 to 170ish really really fast because it was water weight, then from there I very VERY slowly chipped away at the weight. I introduced keto and I lost a quick few more pounds and then repeated the same slow monotonous cycle of up down, up down with aa very VERY slow progression downward overall.

The problem I am having and have had since I started was that if I cheated at all, for any reason… say a birthday, go out to eat, eat something not realizing how many carbs it had, or eat too much low carb food so it adds up to too many carbs, then I (like everyone else) am thrown out of keto for days. I lose progress balloon up with water weight and stall for sometimes aa month.

This becomes super disheartening to know if i just eat the wrong thing once that I might as well just eat it fucking all that day because i just screwed myself.

The level of effort and commitment is sad. It takes me weeks to lose a pound and a few hours to gain it.

#10

I am 5’4" My comfortable weight is somewhere between 120-135

I spent a lot of time there but when i joined the military I got hurt and it made some exercises really hard. I got super addicted to energy drinks, had surgery, and battled with depression and PTSD. My weight slowly rose from about 130 to 155 by the time i got out of the army. Then from there I slowly climbed up to about 160-165 which is where I sat for most of my time in the reserves and it was a battle to just keep it there.

Then when I left the reserves and my relationship deteriorated I gained even more weight. at my highest I climbed on the scale at like 181 (it didn’t stay there it was more around 175ish) I just remember breaking down in tears because I had already been battling my weight and been trying to eat less and be more healthy but I just constantly was gaining weight, but so slowly over time that I would either not notice or I would see it go down a bit then shoot back up and it would just yo-yo like this all my life so when the weight was growing i didn’t always actually knwo it because watching my weight change sometimes up to 10 pounds during my period wasn’t super unusual for me.

I committed to doing more exercise, eating better, etc. I cleaned out all the junk food, stopped with the energy drinks (mostly) and started counting calories. This was only mildly successful because this was before I knew how much carbs played an impact. So I was eating “low glycemic carbs” like brown rice and beans etc. I basically LIVED on beans and rice with veggies and meat and fruit here and there.

I got down to like 160-165 doing that and being very physically active, after an entire year. I was so miserably disappointing with this lack of progress. I was happy because I did lose weight but I gave up a lot of things I enjoyed and throwing depression and ptsd on top of the diet changes just made me very unhappy. I basically had to hate myself to lose weight and keep on the diet.

Then, over a year ago while at college (for a different degree) I got really sick and couldn’t go to school for 2 weeks. I had a fever etc blah blah, i slept most of the time and took antibiotics. I wasn’t eating well and then I got notice one of my friends had killed themselves. I was so depressed and miserable that I stopped eating. I didn’t eat for 9 days and honestly wasn’t sure why I was still alive because I was stupid and thought I should surely be dead by now.

Did some research and stumbled onto keto. Figured what better time than now. So i jumped right into keto and i had lost a bunch of weight from that long extended fast, most of it came back which I expected but not aall of it. but since then, since actively being on keto my weight has yo-yo’d even harder. Most of the time it just stalls and stays the same though and minorly fluctuates when I have my period though. Since starting keto I have gained and lost probably over 100 pounds.

But my bare bottom weight has never gone below 145 sinnce doing keto and whenever I get into the 140s I get nervious because my body seems to fight me really hard. If i get to about 147-150 my body will just stop losing weight, if I don’t push it, i wont move from there. If I fast for 24 hours It will drop a bit, but as soon as I end the fast that weight slowly comes back over the next few days as I eat.

I don’t know if I should be dropping my calories even more but I feel like that would just result in my body adapting, adding more calories slowly over time as some have suggested results in weight gain slowly with the amount i add, more exercise could help but I find it just makes me gain weight from the water and obviously muscle mass :stuck_out_tongue:

I Probably wont quit, that was more of me venting the other day after getting on the scale. But, I do feel my progress is much slower thann I think it should be.

Don’t get me wrong I totally do cheat sometimes, but its fairly rare, like once a month. but the weeks where my weight starts creeping back up and i am having a mental break down the temptation to cheat is so high when i am trapped at work next to a buffet table with rice on it lol

#11

Sounds like you are a human.

You write good letters to yourself in this thread.

Reread them, keep writing and keep working at it.

Do you follow or refer to any Keto experts from your research?

(Edith) #12

Hi @Yaz, it sounds like you’ve had an incredibly stressful time. Stress does not help with weight loss. Stress could be part of your trouble.

There a few things you could possibly try dietarily:

  1. maybe up your protein and lower your fat. It could be you are eating enough fat that your body is getting all the energy it needs from the fat you are eating instead of the fat on your body.

  2. try going all the way to carnivore. I was stalled on keto for over a year. I had even gained a few pounds. I lost the pounds I gained and so far a few extra. I find it much easier to intermittent fast on carnivore and I have absolutely no cravings. I am so satisfied after a meal that the thought of eating another meal repulses me until many hours have passed.

Good luck!

#13

my goodness, I didn’t mean to go there, I am sorry on that!

Change the dynamics is what I was saying. You won’t get anywhere unless you change the above. Best of luck to you tho!

#14

@Yaz
I think you have to stop cheating. PERIOD. “Once a month” throws you out of ketosis for a long long time. Maybe try this: look for keto recipes of your favourite cheat foods. You can find many on youtube.